Adventures of a man, his wife, and a Giant Baby! in modern Scotland. Occasional ninja, pirates and squirrels.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Confused

Band was a bit... odd... last night. The evening started easily enough, with us taking the learners through the material we'd been covering. No issue there. After which, I went and asked the pipe major if the band would be getting the pipes out that night.

At this point he said no, but that he wanted the learners to practice some marching and also starts and stops. Great, I say, and go tell my learners to get their pipes and head through so we can do that.

However, mere moments later they came back, because everyone in the hall was working on chanters instead. So, okay, maybe things had changed. In which case, let's get the chanters and go join them.

But that promptly fell apart, because the rest of the band were working on tunes that the learners have never touched. Which is fine, but not of any use to those learners. So we went back through to instead work on the tunes that they do know.

That lasted two minutes, before the pipe major came looking for us - he wanted us to get our pipes out to play some tunes with the band!

It's worth noting that my reaction to this is more bemusement, with a side order of amusement, rather than annoyance - it was actually quite funny seeing all the plans change every couple of minutes. And the practice on the pipes at the end was no bad thing.

But it would be really good if we could have a consistent plan of action laid out so that we actually know what's happening. (And, actually, it would be even better if the main band could vacate the big hall for a few practices, so that those of us teaching the learners could go through things like marching, starts, and stops without distraction.)